As many of our contributors have testified, Thatcher said it did not exist and Cameron wanted a big one. The linguistics of our civic existence often appear just out of reach of a concrete all embracing definition. Yet it is this very meddlesome miraging that our writer/artists embrace. Thus this issue posits oblique meanings, side-glances and surprising unearthings from Riot Grrrls to school days, Ikea sofas to prefabs, disobedient objects to independent art schools. Whether it be post-ideological, post or pre-Utopian, manifested within the darkling countryside of Glue or the politically incorrect black-faced Morris dancers, whether it be explored through the paintings of Gainsborough or the installations of Jeremy Deller, nostalgically Nationally Trusted over in gold rooms, or re-imagined as a new social realism in the paintings of Nathan Eastwood or Nicholas Middleton, whether an unconscious fantasyland, a yearning for something better or a diatribe against what is wrong with it, this is our non-definitive version of the We as opposed to the I of Society.